Markus Greiner's research is focused on experiments with ultracold atoms, in which strongly correlated many-body quantum systems can be experimentally realized in a well controlled way. This opens the door for studying fundamental questions of modern condensed matter and quantum information physics with atomic physics experiments. By loading ultracold atoms into an optical lattice potential, he and his colleagues in Munich were able to observe a quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator. They also created highly entangled states in optical lattices and produced molecules via photo association. Together with his colleagues in Colorado, he was working with fermionic atoms and observed the first condensate of generalized Cooper pairs in the BCS-BEC crossover regime.

With his new team at Harvard, Professor Greiner is creating very accessible quantum systems of bosonic and fermionic atoms in optical lattices and is developing a novel quantum gas microscope. These experiments should allow the team to realize novel strongly correlated quantum states and to study them with unprecedented control.